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Title: The Unconscious Civilization
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Manufacturer: Free Press
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| The Unconscious Civilization by Free Press * * 1/2 Saul has good points, but fails to convince me this is news | While I agree with much if not most of what JRS says in this book, he and I part company when he tries to convince me that the ailments he diagnoses--a manipulation of language of obfuscate, a bureaucracy that alternately uses the image of the Hero and the corporatist technocrat, a disenfranchised society unable to come together on issues--is anything new. Just last night I was reading some essays by the great thinker Montaigne--anyone wanting a glimpse into the past should read his great works, available on Amazon in a beautiful hardback published by Everyman's Press for a song--and he talked about how language and meaning were being manipulated by the ruling class.......in the 1500s! Robert Nisbet has often hit upon the theme of the lack of fellowship in history. And technocrats are nothing new--the Court of Louis XVI's France was full of them. While Saul convinces me these are bad for society, where he does not convince me is that anything is different now than it was before--with one exception.
As he points out, our universities, once bastions of learning, have become largely job placement centers for elite, training thousands who can afford the $100,000 tuition these days to become elite cogs in machines. These days it's more shocking for ivy league schools to graduate people ignorant in HTML than in Schopenhauer. The reasons for this are better--and more succinctly--detailed in Anthony Kronman's book Education's End (which I've discussed in detail in another Amazon review).
And that's my problem with this book. Despite its thin size, it ranges all over the place in argument, is sprawling and undisciplined. Saul makes some good points for sure, but they're buried in many paragraphs that are either nothing new or far off topic or both. He sees connections and causalities that are tenuous at best, and seems as unfocused as anyone as to their cause--thus, he draws in every piece of historical knowledge he can get his hands on, attempting to analyze the problem to death without really ever pinning it down succinctly. Whether you agree with him or not, he has to prune and reorganize his subject matter and write with more focus and insight. Thus I can't recommend this fuzzy book too highly, even though I'm at sympathy with a good deal of what it says. Look to Voltaire, Montaigne, Nisbet and other great thinkers intead. | | The Unconscious Civilization by Free Press Incredibly lucid depiction of contemporary society by a painfully lucid author | One of the best books I have ever read.
To be admired: the transgression of the stereotypical, simplistic and delusional split of political discourse into left and right; the rightful denounciation of contemporary universities who are selling their humanist soul to the vacuous structures of mechanistic, self-obssessed, memory-less, profit-obssesed corporate bubbles.
What is important to me, personally, is the impact that this system has on the everyday psyche of individuals and on their ability to form genuine human relations in real, local communities. The author did not touch on these aspects, he stayed mainly at the macro-level of analysis. But anyone with an interest in social-psychology and human relations can figure out quickly what this impact is and what is happening to the average contemporary folk as a result. It's about why workplaces and the inhabiting "managers" are about shuffling empty words in vacuous reports and presentations - and nothing else. Why people (including the so-called "educated" ones at the altars of corporatism) are not capabale of discussing anything of substance, in a common language, on a common ground, with their fellow-humans; why narcissistic western societies (particularly north American) are full of clinically depressed individuals, with lives devoid of any real meaning - despite their historically unique standards of living (which apparently are not enough as they continue to compete for more...and more...and more with no clear purpose in mind other than "success" in and of itself).
Why everyone is always having some personal agenda leading to some sort of "personal, competitive achievement" at the expense of family, small community, close friends and true happiness - as opposed to fake-smiled, commercially-inspired Kodak moments; why everyone is some sort of "volunteer" paying lip service to the idea of community yet so few have truly close friends or local family ties in the name of whom they would refuse to move across the country when the corporation dangles a few extra bucks in front of their materialist, soul-less eyes.
How painful and how real. I used to believe that statements such as "I don't want to bring any children into this kind of world we have today" were just dramatic calls for attention.
Well, after reading this book, such statements acquire a new dimension. We ARE living in an insane, dehumanized system and the goal for any humanist at heart should be to stay lucid and to protect one's children, family and close friends from sliping into vacuity.
The sheep on the cover should be enough to scare anyone conscious human. | | The Unconscious Civilization by Free Press A coup d'etat in slow motion? | A key premise of the book is that a life worth living, the so-called examined life, the fully aware life cannot take place without individuals in the society being fully conscious - or without seeking the kind of self-knowledge that readily can be translated into action.
Saul maintains that we have a "new religion," the blind pursuit of self-interest. It is led by an ideology of "corporatism," which has deformed the American ideal of a life worth living into one devoid of a concept of the common public good. Through it, one of America's most noble ideas, that of "rugged individualism" has been sullied, distorted and transformed into an ideology of selfishness; an ideology that has so manipulated our reality that our the language and knowledge, usually placed in the service of actions and designed to improve our way of life, has become useless.
The corporate compartmentalization of, and distortion of public knowledge, and the accompanying enforced conformity has so confused us and has so muted our voices that knowledge no longer has any effect on our consciousness nor on our actions. Individual selfishness as "modeled" by corporate self-interest has hi-jacked Western civilization as we have come to know it.
The book describes how corporatism has accomplished this feat: It has used its own ideology of self-interest (and the promise of certainty that all ideologies promote) to render us passive and conformist in areas that matter and non-conformist in those that do not. This new pseudo or false individualism has the effect of immobilizing and disarming our civilization intellectually and thus renders it unconscious.
The most important way it does this is by denying and undermining the legitimacy of the individual as the primary unit and defender of, as well as the center of gravity of the public good. The public good becomes deformed by, and subordinate to, and equated with the narrow pursuit of corporate self-interests, as most often defined by the pursuit of profits and associated corporate perks. The hedonistic model of the corporate life is projected on to society writ large as the only life worth living.
The impetus for placing corporate interests (and the corporate model of our humanity) at center stage in the drama of Western Civilization, seems to have come about through the misconception that rugged individualism, democracy and our current understanding of the public good were once defined by, depend on, and proceed directly from, the pursuit of economic interests. This is a misconception because in actual fact exactly the reverse is true: It was notions of the public good as defined by democracy and individualism that gave rise to economic interests, and not the other way around.
Moreover, economic models have been so spectacularly wrong and unsuccessful, that they could not have survived without an ideology that renders the public unconscious. Saul suggests that even the best economic models amount to little more than passive tinkering. The fact that we have come to rely on them -- even though we know they are seriously flawed and have little or no basis in reality -- is compelling evidence of our lack of memory and thus, of our lack of collective consciousness.
According to the author, it is the proper use of knowledge and memory that renders us conscious (and thus by extension, also renders us human). The misuse of knowledge and memory through corporate and technological, manipulation, specialization and compartmentalization is just a deeper form of collective denial.
Said differently, (corporate generated) specialization creates its own illusions. When knowledge actually becomes confused and is sufficiently narrowed, compartmentalization promotes the illusion that knowledge is multiplied when in fact it has shrunken. It leaves the impression that more rather than less knowledge is being created. It promotes the illusion that truth is only what the specialist can measure; that "managing is doing," (and more importantly that a managerial class is important and necessary). Finally, it creates the illusion that the ideology, which promotes corporatism, produces certainty (the main job of any ideology).
These illusions all have facilitated the corporate takeover of what would otherwise be seen as, the public interest. By doing so, the legitimacy of the individual as the center of gravity of the public good is crowded out, undermined and denied.
Thus the management elite, (with their suitcases full of money to buy off our elected representatives) like a cancer, is let loose on society. It lives within its own insulated cocoon creating an artificially interiorized sense of its own importance, wellbeing and its own distorted vision of civilization as a whole. Insulated from within, the management elite is free to grow without bounds, without accountability, and in complete disregard for the reality "out there," and always only to satisfy and service its own selfish needs. Truth is not in the world "out there" but is in what the professionals can measure and whatever is reported to these insulated elites. The deeper the insulated managerial class retreats into its own interiorized illusions of reality, the more confused language becomes and the less likely knowledge can be translated into actions that will effect the wider reality, and thus the public good.
In its pursuit to deny the legitimacy of the public good and to replace it with corporate econometric models of reality, Saul has traced the history of this process and gives many examples of how it works: through media propaganda, films, ads, music, sports and style-and always through insinuations of what is considered proper thought and ways of behaving.
One of the better examples he gives is how unemployment keeps getting redefined downward with no relation to the reality of the labor market but mostly to suit the needs of the neo-cons (the courtiers of the corporate elites). Or how, even as companies are losing money and are laying-off large numbers of ordinary workers, the salaries and incentive packages of the managerial elites continue to rise - often even until the very day the companies actually go bust.
Another example given is how through the process of globalization, that by the year 2020 the U.S. will be fully reduced to a Third World country. We are told that our future standard of living will depend entirely on globalization. Here globalization (like its companion concept, productivity) is a synonym for pegging workers' wage rates to the lowest wages available worldwide. It is never mentioned in such discussions that the salaries and incentive packages of the managerial elites will actually rise significantly as this "mother of all least common denominators economic formulas" is being applied to the lower end of the economic class scale. Taken to its logical conclusion, the salary of U.S. workers will equal those of Chinese peasants by 2020; and the corporate elites all will be filthy rich like Sam Walton. This "Wal-Martization" of America is already well in train.
Why are we so susceptible to being manipulated by corporate generated ideology and power? Saul gives an answer: We have an addictive weakness for large illusions that are tied to power and that can simplify our worldview by promising emotional certainty. The examples he gives are none other than the great religions themselves, and their spin-offs of Marxism, fascism and most of the autocratic governments of the past, including Hitler's Third Reich.
The roads to serfdom, or to fascism or communism (or pick your own ism) all intersect at the same ideology reference points: they begin as enforced social and political orthodoxy and conformity: first fashion and style; then the social enforcement of ways of thinking; and then patriotism is made into a religious-like requirement; after which rights and free speech are suppressed in the name of national security or loyalty to the state. One-by-one laws are suspended and then arbitrary arrests and disappearances begin; and finally the country is rendered completely passive and unconscious - compressed into a pseudo-patriotic religious trance.
In the modern era, this progression is by now all too familiar: It leads directly to the de-legitimatization of the citizen as the primary defender of the public good. This just as inevitably leads to handing over power to those whose self-interests are larger than their dedication to the preservation of the public good or even to the preservation and defense of the state itself.
The citizen then ceases to be able to determine what is, and is not real. He becomes immobilized like a child, unable to judge what is in his own best interests -- let alone what is in the best interest of the public good or the state. He is then forced to sing for his dinner and to dance to the corporate tune for any sense of wellbeing or self-worth. The "public good" becomes completely subordinate to the "corporate good."
What Saul admonishes us about is already imminently clear: that the kind of society we have is determined by where the true source of legitimacy lies. Today legitimacy in America -- that is its power, organization, and influence -- lies not in the vote and in stylized but impotent public citizen participation, but in the hands of the lobbyists, the technocrats, and the anti-democratic and anti-patriotic corporate vampires.
Saul did not need to tell us that all the serious decisions are now made in the back rooms without consulting the people. The best "the people" can hope for (and indeed what they yearn for) is that the decisions made over their heads will at least retain a semblance of emotional ideological purity.
While the corporate robber barons sneak out the back door to their off-shore tax havens (with the nations valuables in tow), the public good has been distorted and transformed into little more than "What I have" or into bumper sticker sized emotionalisms: the advancement of creative design and the right to post the Ten Commandments on the court house steps, abortion and gun rights, anti-Affirmative Action, states rights, etc. Because of its lack of consciousness, Americans have lost the ability to conceptualize a common good larger than their own immediate individual narrowly defined self-interests.
How do we get out of this coup d'etat in slow motion? Saul's answer is that we must change the dynamics of the process but he gives few specifics on how this can be done. This a great and very sobering read. Five stars. | | The Unconscious Civilization by Free Press Wake up and Smell the Oil Wal-Mart Shoppers | If the doubling, in less than a year, of the price of oil for no discernable reason (with no end in sight), and with absolutely no reaction from us or our government is not evidence that something is terribly wrong with our collective mind. Then surely an order of magnitude increase in the cost of medical care and prescription drugs, and the quintupling of our health insurance (for those of us who have any), should be.
Or, one might have imagined that the juxtaposition of soaring corporate profits (in these very same areas) with an effective reduction in "actual wages" everywhere else, would also have shaken us from our deep collective slumber?
Or maybe the fact that we have been led into yet another war for no defensible reasons and without either an exit strategy or a fighting plan -- a war whose justifications and rationale keeps changing with each increased attack from the terrorists as our national debt continues to soar -- would have shaken us out of our passivity.
While our government's response to the needs of the "rank-and-file" is increasingly non-existent, or completely ineffectual, and the "managerial class" continues to rob us blind as they laugh all the way to the bank; we are obsessed with the risk of breast implants, abortion rights, hanging the Ten Commandments in the public square, reality shows (that are anything but real), Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction, and how to continue to win at the game of "Democrats and Republicans (or liberals and conservatives, or Blacks versus Whites, or males versus females, or pick your own senseless emotional dichotomy)."
But the very best evidence yet of our lack of consciousness and proof that our society is being thrown under the bus while we watch in horror with our eyes wide open, is when the most devastating critique of our own slothfulness is also the sanest, most compassionate and most eloquent.
Saul in this trenchant sanity check of the society that leads the Western World realizes that the time for vitriol and shouting has long since passed. That is why with eloquence, understated passion and with measured but devastating logic and reason (that quality he so distrusts), he has issued a broadside at the foundation stone of what ails our society most: Rampant and immoral Corporatism.
And even though in the end, his prescription for how we are to extricate ourselves from this dilemma is unconvincing, he has laid the necessary groundwork for serious thinking to begin. If "the people" in Western Democracies are ever to regain control of their minds, and then eventually their societies; Saul's ideas in this small volume must inevitably be contended with. Five stars. | | The Unconscious Civilization by Free Press SAUL'S PATHWAY | | THIS BOOK IS A STIRRING READ. WE ARE ALL BURIED UNDER CORPORATE PSEUDO REASON WHERE REASON IS ONLY APPLIED WHERE POWER BENEFITS. SAUL GIVES VOICE TO THE MADNESS OF THIS REASON AND ENCOURAGES US TO REACH INTO THE HEART AND FIND COURAGE TO GO WITH OUR LOGICAL FACILITIES TO EXAMINE THE NOTION OF THE "PUBLIC GOOD" I.E. THE DESIGN OF A GOOD SOCIETY. HE APPEARS TO SEE THAT THE LEGITIMACY OF THE PUBLIC GOOD AS A SOCIAL CONTRACT, IF ADOPTED, WOULD SERVE AS AN IMPETUS TO DEBATE THE QUESTIONS LEFT OFF OF THE POWER AGENDA. I SENSE THAT HE IS LOOKING FOR A CURRENCY OTHER THAN MONEY TO CREATE AN ENERGY THAT THE POLITICIAN MUST RESPOND TO. IN THEORY ONE MAN ONE VOTE CAN BEAT ONE DOLLAR ONE VOTE. BUT MUCH OF THE SOCIAL ARCHITECTURE SUCH AS PUBLIC SCHOOLS, AN FOCUS ON THE HUMANITIES AND AN EDUCATION DESIGNED TO CREATE CITIZENS AND MORE APPRECIATION FOR PUBLIC SERVICES WILL BE RESISTED BY THE COURTIERS OF POWER. THIS IS A VERY GOOD LAYOUT OF WHERE THE TENSIONS ARE IN MODERN CAPITALIST-democracy. WE NEED AN EXTRAORDINARY AND SUSTAINED ACT OF IMAGINATION AND WILL BY THE POPULATION OF THE UNITED STATES, PERHAPS FUELED BY CONTRADICTION BETWEEN OUR FOUNDING PRINCIPLES AND CURRENT PRACTICE TO MAKE HEADWAY. (WONDER IF THERE ARE ANY WEALTHY BENEFACTORS WHO WOULD DONATE COPIES OF "ADBUSTERS" MAGAZINE TO A MILLION HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS? ) COMEDY SHOWS LIKE CHAPELLE, SIMPSONS, AND ESPECIALLY SOUTH PARK ARE TELLING US THAT THE FEELINGS AND ENERGY ARE OUT THERE. THIS IS A GREAT BOOK. IT IS ALSO PAINFUL AS IT UNDERSCORES WHERE WE ARE AMISS. THE AUTHOR IS CANADIAN. ANYONE WHO WATCHED BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE AND THE SCENES ABOUT CANADA WOULD SENSE THAT A SOPHISTICATED AUTHOR FROM THAT LAND WOULD SEE WHERE THINGS ARE SO EXAGGERATED IN THIS COUNTRY. THOUGH CANADA IS HARDLY FREE FROM CORPORATIST INFLUENCE. I LOOK FORWARD TO HIS NEXT WORK. ON EQUILIBRIUM. THOUGH IT IS HARD TO BELIEVE IN EQUILIBRIUM/ AS IN A RESTING PLACE. POLITICS WILL BE A DYNAMIC BATTLE FOR EVER. AND THE FORCES OF COMPASSION WILL BE PITCHED AGAINST THE MATRIX OF FEARS AND THE IDEALOGY THAT FEAR SPAWNS. | | The Unconscious Civilization by Free Press Book Description | | Knowledge, The Enlightenment believed, could protect us from the follies of ideology. But Saul maintains that 'knowing' has not made us "conscious'. Instead we have become increadingly passive, our society increadingly conformist. These are no easy solutions to this problem, Saul say, but change is still possible. "Winner of the Govenor General's Award" |
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